cloy
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
I added horseradish and hot sauce for a kick, and just enough ketchup to tint the sauce pale pink without letting it cloy.
From Seattle Times ● May 29, 2023
And whenever the cutesiness threatens to cloy, the script throws in a palate-cleansing taste of tart or bitter.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2014
What happened then, and I may have been two days in or three or five, I couldn’t really say, was that things began to cloy.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 10, 2014
Football's syrupy brand of sentiment can cloy, but when pre-match festivities took in a minute's silence for fans who died since leaving the Goldstone, it felt genuine.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 30, 2011
And I remember the smells of the hills, wild azalea and a very distant skunk and the sweet cloy of lupin and horse sweat on harness.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
The screen virtually overflows with computer-generated wizardry and cutesy flora and fauna, to a degree that cloys.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 15, 2019
Without stripping gears, she makes fast switches from explosive comedy to a sober emotionalism that never cloys.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2017
In fact, if anything in “Olive and the Bitter Herbs” actually cloys, it is Olive’s own peevishness, strangely enough.
From New York Times ● Aug. 17, 2011
And the magic of the gadgetry gradually cloys and clutters in the mind.
From Time Magazine Archive
When children weave fancies of wonderland they use the resources of the imagination with economy; uninterrupted sunshine soon cloys.
From Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England by Walter W. Greg
Her formula, a combination of hard masculine realism with feminine deftness and sympathy, pleased many a post-War reader cloyed with hard-boiled sentimentality.
From Time Magazine Archive
He envies the young for being young and for possessing the integrity that has eroded in him, the appetite for life that has cloyed on his palate, and the courage that has been drowned.
From Time Magazine Archive
If this cloyed on Holmes, he never gave a sign; he was obviously having too much fun watching Laski's continuous intellectual floor show.
From Time Magazine Archive
Appetites already cloyed by the night’s heat were further diminished.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Their senses, cloyed by grief, knew that whatever it was of ill-omen, it could not touch them now.
From Trusia A Princess of Krovitch by Davis Brinton
Such a cloying tone from the queen of bitterness!
From Slate ● May 6, 2026
In his pursuit of answers, Roher employs a cloying framework: his loving wife occasionally narrating as if this were a storybook and Roher the protagonist of a scary adventure.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2026
Not cloying, not milky, not trying to be liked by everyone at the bake sale.
From Salon ● Mar. 5, 2026
Working with a decent if cloying screenplay by Joe Anders, Winslet aims to capture all of the intimate moments and outsized chaos that large families are prone to weaving between.
From Salon ● Jan. 1, 2026
Vases of blossoms give off a cloying scent that makes my eyes itch.
From "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins
